Alisa Kwitney’s new five-issue comic series Howl has a title that references the Allen Ginsberg poem that became a Beat generation anthem — and the alien howl given by the pod people in the 1978 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Kwitney spoke to Cemetery Dance about her new science fiction horror story, the influence of her mother Ziva and science fiction writer father Robert Sheckley, and about her time as an editor at DC Comics.
(Interview conducted by Danica Davidson)
How much of the story is based on your parents?
That is the central DNA of this. I always thought it would be really interesting to write about my parents. Maybe everyone has the delusion as a young writer that people will be interested in the minutiae of their upbringing. But in my case, my dad was the science fiction writer Robert Sheckley. He wrote these absurdist, humorous science fiction short stories starting in the ’50s and into the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s. One of his stories was turned into a book, which became the movie The Tenth Victim. Carlo Ponti made it into a blissfully campy ’60s film with Marcello Mastroianni, and Ursula Andress. So I knew that on the one hand there would be people who might just find that aspect interesting. The other aspect was that my parents lived together in Greenwich Village during that whole beatnik era. When we think of Greenwich Village, we think of the Greenwich Village which was this hotbed of artists and folkies and jazz singers and abstract expressionists.
Those were the sorts of things that went into the mix and I think there is this ongoing, pervasive myth of the asshole genius, who was usually a dude. I just saw the new Bob Dylan movie and I thought, “Ohh, the myth of the asshole genius where the assholery and the genius are inextricably bound is alive and well.” The idea that women wish they could domesticate him even as his undomesticatableness is what pulls them in. Kind of like people who decide to keep a civet as a house cat. All of those elements went into the beginning DNA of this project.
Can you tell us about your background in comics and how it got you to where you are today?
I think like a lot of people, I was a very nerdy kid who loved comics, and I particularly loved humor and horror and the House of Mystery, House of Secrets fusion of insult comedy and dark comedy and horror. I was in Columbia’s MFA program, feeling like I was the only person not writing a New Yorker short story, when I realized I needed to get a job to make some money. It occurred to me that my two great loves were comics and romance, and I just sent out blind inquiries to Marvel and DC, and I think it was Silhouette Romance at the time. Marvel never responded. DC said, “Come on down.” Silhouette interviewed me and said I was overqualified. Six months after I’d started at DC, Silhouette changed their minds, but I said, “No, I’m having the time of my life. I can’t leave this.”
I should also say that when I got interviewed, I wasn’t completely aware of what DC was. I knew [Batman:] The Killing Joke and some of the late ’80s, early ’90s stuff. But when they asked me, “Which comics do you love the best?” I did something you should never do. I just said, “Ohh, those comics that you stopped publishing more than a decade ago when I was a child. House of Mystery and House of Secrets, I love those.” Instead of saying, “Well, here’s the door,” they said actually, “You might be interested in Karen Berger. She likes that weird horror stuff.” Later I was working for Vertigo, which was Karen Berger’s imprint, but before Vertigo was Vertigo, it was Karen Burger’s “weird stuff.”
I started working with Karen. I was her assistant editor to begin with, working on Shade, the Changing Man and The Sandman and just loving it so much. I felt that whatever I had learned at Columbia’s MFA program, it didn’t hold a candle to me to what I learned reading the scripts that came in, being able to actually have reader questions. Do you ever wish you could go to your favorite author and say, “Wait a minute, we seem to have jumped ahead. I want to know what happened back here.”? I was allowed to do that. I would talk to Karen about scripts and say, “I really want to know about the first time Troy Grenzer, who’s this serial killer inhabiting Shade’s body, gets together with the female character.”
Also Danny O’Neil, who was a Batman editor, but also the amazing writer who did so many things — created Ra’s al Ghul — would give workshops with Paul Levitz to assistant editors in writing. I loved what they taught. They taught about A, B and C plots, and things that were never discussed in my MFA program.
You said you can you can’t take horror straight up, so you like to serve it with humor. Can you explain?
I like child horror, and humor is often a part of horror aimed at younger readers. I require that. I’m classic Twilight Zone rather than Black Mirror. The Black Mirror episodes that I watched skewed so dark. Everyone is evil and everyone gets punished. I thought, “Oh, I could just be on X or Twitter for that.” I want my fiction to comfort me as it horrifies me.
What do you want readers to take away from Howl?
That’s a hard one because I think there’s no one single message. I think this is a little more complex. But for me there’s a moment culturally right now which for me rhymes a little with McCarthyism in which I think people are very eager to have the world be split neatly into the good and the bad, my side and the other side. I just think if I had one takeaway, it’s that that kind of thinking is not to be trusted.
What can you tell us about the art?
I am a novelist and I’m also a comic book writer, and the thing that is so delicious to me about comic book writing is the collaboration. I taught comic book writing to some writers who aren’t themselves artists, and I say it’s really a collaboration. You aren’t looking for someone to turn your words into pictures. The transformation is the collaboration. If you wrote an opera and you were looking for a choreographer to turn it into a ballet, that’s a lot of change that happens. If you embrace it and look for someone who’s a partner in crime for you, then you get the most amazing results.
Mauricet — he was my artist on G.I.L.T., our previous project for AHOY. That was Golden Girls meets Sex and the City by way of The Twilight Zone. He and I just play and talk back and forth and I was really inspired in parts of Howl by obviously in 1950s stuff, but also by Rob Bottin, who is the practical effects guy on the 1982 John Carpenter’s The Thing. He was so creative and so inventive. Mauricet and I were just trying to figure out ways that we could be as inventive in terms of these protean fungal aliens and let the spirit of Rob Bottin animate.
Where can people find out more about you and your work?
I am on Instagram. I think I had this strange idea of making myself K dot witty. I don’t know why, but that is what I am. I’m also on Bluesky at AKwitney and therefore more findable, and Facebook and website and all the usual things. I am still in the cesspool of X, but everyday I think, “Am I still here? I guess I’m still here.”
Any other thoughts?
I would say that for anyone who falls in love with beatniks and horror and artists, they should check out Roger Corman’s 1959 film Bucket of Blood. I think that they did the original Little Shop of Horrors before it became the equally splendid 1986 musical. People who like Howl are going to love Bucket of Blood, and more people should be watching Bucket of Blood.
